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I find text abbreviations to be the dumbing down of language and would NOT like to see them in the English Language Dictionary as anything other that slang or abbreviations. People should know the word is "probably" and not "prolly". Speaking in text, to me, shows how uneducated or just plain dumb an adult is. Kids speak gibberish and nonsense all the time, but as an employable adult, you should speak like one.

You're kidding. I thought the dictionary was for real words. I can just see it...in the near future sone kid is gonna answer a question with IDK instead of I don't know and is going to use the "it's in the dictionary" excuse for the truncation. If they must do something like a dictionary for these terms, it'd be better to have them in their own volume.

Linguistics is my area of training. Let me assure you that there are no such things as "unreal words." Language is how humans communicate with one other. We refer to language as a contract between the speaker and the listener. Whatever "words" or verbal cues facilitate communication are "real words." Those verbal cues might be "nuh-uh" or "awwww" or "idk" or "the cat is out of food." As long as the utterance facilitates communication, it is considered a "real word."

Words make it into the dictionary based on broad spectrum usage over time -- what we call "citations." Certain widely used words in specific fields will not be included because their usage is either not broad enough (confined to a specific industry) or they haven't been around long enough to make enough of an impact on the culture for them to be considered necessary for dictionary inclusion.